Thursday, 30 June 2016

Last week saw the second game in the club Mordheim Campaign Season 3 with the warbands following the victors of game 1, Kev's Undead, into the Drakwald Forest south of Dalberz in search of the lair of the Witch, the remains of which the Undead had recovered.

Things begin to stir in the woods

Once again we had a full house with Andy L with his reconstituted Witch Hunter's, Ian's Dwarf Ranger's, Andy W with his Skaven, Dave K and his Marienburger's, Kev and his Undead and my own Protectorate of Sigmar.

The table was laid out with the ubiquitous woods, hills and ruins, with Witch's lair in the centre guarded by some token skeletons. This is where the target of the proceedings was laid with a treasure chest of goodies to be had, and there were a smattering of other treasure tokens around the board for upping the cash haul for everyone. The woods were also crawling with dryads, who weren't happy about the unwelcome intrusion of lots of adventuring warbands.

The Marienburgers kicked off proceedings and began a cautious circuit to their left, screened by the woods and a hefty hill and began to close on the the Protectorate right flank. The Protectorate for their part advanced straight down the middle throwing out the Huntsman and his hounds towards the objective and screened their left with their Archers and Crusader Spearmen. The Archers did get an early lucky shot off as they advanced and pinned a Skaven before they had a chance to move.

The skaven, who were a bit cornered between the Protectorate and the Witch Hunters spread their forces a bit more and keeping an eye on the WH's with half their force, spread out towards the centre and the Witch Hunters followed suit and advanced enmasse towards the Skaven at first in cover behind another hill.

The Dwarf Rangers started their slow and inexorable advance straight towards the centre and the Undead shambled towards the centre too but they strayed slightly with an eye on picking up a treasure token or two.

The blood and guts started next as the NPC activation happening at the end of each round, with the Dryads, who if within 8" of a figure would immediately attack (or random move 5" if not) and one of their number immediately launched into combat with the nearest Protectorate, one of the Acolytes who managed to survive the onslaught for now.Things began to heat up quite quickly from the second round with the Marienburger's continuing their advance round the hill towards the Protectorate, hindered slightly by one of their number suffering the effects of stupidity. The Protectorate moved towards the objective and started lobbing arrows at anyone they could see and eventually taking out one of the skeletons guarding the treasure but despite all the PoS hero's joining in the fight with the Dryad which had attacked the Acolyte, they only managed to take one wound from the beast but it in turn managed to remove the Acolyte.

Protectorate defend against the Skaven and Dryads

The Skaven spread out and moved towards the goal and the Protectorate while playing a delaying action on the Witch Hunters who had sent their warhounds forward over the hill but some Giant Rats summoned at the beginning of the game did sterling service while fighting the dogs. The Rest of the WH's followed their hounds over the hill and joined the fray.

The Dwarf Rangers continued their slow and steady advance and began to fire off the odd shot at anyone that could be seen and took out another of the skeletons and one of the Protectorate Hounds with long shots which did indeed work.

The Undead continued their advance too while picking up a treasure token on the way, slowly heading straight for the objective.

Undead shamble forward while looking for treasure

Skaven hinding in the woods fight the WHs and PoS

Once again the Dryads move proved to be pretty decisive and obviously they were not taking the intrusion into their domain kindly. The one already in combat now removed the Protectorate Warrior Priest Leader from the fight. Another had a brief tussle with the Dwarves but proved relatively easy meat to the axes and the other moved menacingly towards the Marienburger's and Undead.

WHs charge over the hill into the Skaven

Marienburgers playing it cagey, advance behind coveren-masse

The next round saw the demise of the Protectorate looming as the Skaven charged out of their cover and several laid into the PoS hirelings and took out the Huntsman (and grabbed the loot he had just picked up) and one of the Crusaders while the fight on the hill heated up as the Witch Hunters ganged up on the delaying Skaven and though they put up a good fight eventually went down.

Birds eye view - mid-game

The Dwarves began to close on the objective and started to look pretty dangerous as there wasn't really anyone close by to slow them down.

The Undead continued as fast as they could go towards the objective but had failed to notice a lurking Dryad nearby who would surprise them and jump out and took out a Dreg. The other Dryads combats continued and one of their number made a bee line (randomly) straight towards the Mariewnburger's.

The Marienburg Merc's calmly peppered the interveneing Dryad with arrows and took the second of their number out without pause for breath and promptly proceeded to take a long shot and removed another of the Protectorate hirelings out who promptly failed their rout test and bolted from the Woods in fright. One band down.

The Skaven move into the space freed from the PoS

The Giant Rats hold up the WHs

Look! No Protectorate.

Skaven and Witch Hunters fight it out

The Skaven continued their advance west which was now towards the Marienburger's but were now being hunted by the Witch Hunters who were fairly well unscathed.

The Dwarves now came into their own and engaged the remaining skelton in the ruins and a wandering Dryad and a fight now broke out there with the skeleton not lasting long.

The Vampire from the Undead now jumped into the offending Dryad and a tussle over two or three rounds proceeded but though the Vampire managed to knock the Dryad down he didn't get the kill.

The Undead sent out their beasties and they now took the fight to the Dwarves as they clambered through the ruins to try and claim the treasure.

The Skaven being chased down by the WH hounds turn to face their adverseries and with several isolated fights going on in the woods managed to take out the offending dogs but also lost a couple in the process. The Witch Hunter continued their chase now heading for the Marienburgers as well as the Skaven and the Marienburgers in turn were being to emerge from their cover round and over the hill emboldened by their recent successes.

The Skaven on the run from the Witch Hunters

Dwarves battle the Undead Hounds for the Treasure Chest

The Dwarves taking out the Dryad in the Ruins and after a brief but telling fight laid low the Undead Hounds for only one loss in turn now managed to seize the treasure and the Undead continue their shuffle but their Lord locked in combat with a stubborn Dryad is otherwise occupied.

The Skaven are the next to be surprised by the Dryads as the one which had damaged the Protectorate jumped on the Skaven sorcerer and attendant, who had sneaked into the outskirts of the ruins to try and pick up a treasure token near the boundary while the others were otherwise occupied, and promptly put the sorcer on the deck.

The Marienburger's then adding insult to injury dropped another of the Skaven horde with some more ranged fire and it was the Skaven's turn to fail their rout test and leave the field.

The Witch Hunters now advanced on the Marienburger's but with the Marienburgers beginning to form a firing line on the hill and starting to lob shots in their direction and the rogue Dryad also added to their woe's.

The Marienburgers form line against the advancing WH'swhile the Undead assault the Dwarf position but bounce

The Undead failing to make a dent in the Dwarf lines and having lost four or five of their number also bolted from the scene annoyingly as the Vampire was close to dealing with the pesky Dryad he had fought and finally managed to drop but not kill so was robbed that consolation.

Another round saw the Witch Hunters falling foul of the Dryad menace and some telling shots from the Marienburger's decided that caution was the best policy and beat a retreat to save further losses.

The Marienburger's try and close the gap on the Dwarves

With only the Marienburger's left to halt the Dwarves from stealing away the treasure, Dave tried to slow their progress down and a race was on for the Mercenaries to try and catch or slow the Dwarves as they retreated off the table with the loot.

End game - the Marienburger's pursuit

Two or three rounds of moving as quickly as possible while alternate lobbed shots were fired but the Dwarves slow and steady pace proved inexorable with the Marienburger's getting waylaid by one of the surviving though bloodied Dryads which made a bit of a mess of the Mercenaries for their trouble. In the end the Marienburger's were just to far from the Dwarves to start and were unable to meaningfully stop their march.

Another eventful game and the victory this time going to the Dwarves and their increased number. Their toughness meaning that their opponents were learning to give them a wide berth so are beginning to look like the band to beat already.

Ian having won, picked up some intel along with some meaty treasure, and picked the target of the next game which was to head further into the Woods and more treasure and the lair of another of the Witches Coven, rather than going back to Dalberz and aid the citizens from another attack from Allex the Necromancers minions. Which pretty much keeps within the character of his band, go for the cash.

Losses were fairly light all round with the exception of the Protectorate however, who lost their Captain, the Warrior Priest and his replacement was the Acolyte who had gone down with him, and who managed to loose an arm. That should be interesting for the Protectorate.

Monday, 6 June 2016

Following on from the previous installment on the Terrain Boards experiment, I have now completed the reverse side of the boards, which strangely was the instigation of the project but I ended up doing this last.

As reported last time I was using the Heroic Maps 'Frost Ruins' tile set which was available fairly cheaply through the usual download sites and I had printed out the 50 or so pdf sheets on to card and then cut the individual sheets out roughly and then proceeded to trim each sheet to match its neighbours. Starting in the bottom right corner and sheet no 50 (for no real reason as it didn't seem to matter which corner to start.

As I have mentioned before this tile set includes a reasonable (and luckily consistent) overlap on each sheet, so to make sure each sheet matched its neighbour before gluing I had to check the alignment of each sheet prior to cutting. Most of the time this was pretty easy as most of the sheets have a paved 'grid' as part of the design so this was easy to follow for cutting but the occasional sheet had to be aligned with its partners and cut lines marked to suit.

Once trimmed to size, each sheet was glued to the mdf base board using spray adhesive.

The exercise was pretty laborious but otherwise pretty easily accomplished, and once all the sheets were glued the two 4' x 2' boards were separated by the skillful use of a very sharp knife. The boards then had a run of black tape run around the edge to protect the exposed card edge from future damage.

As the tile set produces a 53" x 53" finished area, there was a cards width at one end spare and a half length cards worth trimmed from the top giving a reasonable amount of 'spare' feature. This spare material will be used to decorate some polystyrene blocks to produce some raised base area's for a bit of vertical interest to the terrain layouts available, always nice for a skirmish layout. I'll post on how these turn out once completed soon.

Again, as with side 1, the experiment can be deemed a success in that the whole exercise has produced two usable base terrain layouts but with a fair expenditure in time and hasn't produced an exceptional saving in cash, so for the difference, next time I would probably go with the bought gaming mat option.

My next venture into gaming boards is going to be in the realm of modular terrain boards , a terrain project I have been itching to do for quite some time. More on that hopefully soon.